Time on a Stick
by Crayz9000
Summary: In the same vein as lunatic spoofs like Dexter's Empire, Time on a Stick lampoons ST, SW, Voltron, Power Rangers, Half-Life, Monty Python, Spaceballs, Pirates of the Caribbean, Stardust, Harry Potter, Twilight, and anything else that hits my funny bone.
1. Chapter 1

**Dexter's Empire**

**A spoof fanfic by Crayz9000**

**DISCLAIMER**

Yadda yadda yadda, Star Trek is owned by Paramount, yadda yadda yadda...

**ACT II**

**Time on a Stick**

Chapter One

"IN the beginning was the..." Papers can be heard rustling in the background. "Oops... wrong book. Umm... ah, here it is." An even longer pause as somebody clears their throat, in addition to more uncouth sounds. "Once upon a time, there was Planet. Planet was good..."

flip, flip, flip

"The second son of the Universe was Kynes... Aw damn it, those idiots can't even put the books in the right order."

CUT TO:

A Scotsman abusing several sheep.

VOICE (OS): "Shit."

CUT TO:

Q reclining in a lawn chair.

Q stands up. Unfortunately, his shorts fall off, and a collective groan in heard from the audience. In response, Q frowns, finally clapping twice. The shorts quickly whiz back into place, and sporadic applause is heard.

"Well, I seem to have gotten your attention," he begins bluntly. "You just have to hand it to those people at Clap-On."

There's an awkward pause, and several feeble attempts at laughter are heard.

"Anyway, I think I'll just begin by showing this cheesy PowerPoint presentation." Q extracts a remote from where the sun don't shine, and points it at some unidentified target.

bleep, bloop

CUT TO:

A medieval castle gate rolling up.

Q (OS): "Wrong remote."

PowerPoint presentation flashes up... no, not THAT way...

**DEXTER'S EMPIRE**

**ACT II**

Fans of the original series™ were somewhat disappointed with the results of the finale.

click

Striking from a hidden base, rabid supporters of MKSheppard won their first victory against the evil KYNESIAN IMPERIUM.

click

Unfortunately, we are uncertain about the specific results of the victory. Several thousand pregnant Chads were allegedly discovered hanging outside Miami, Coruscant last night.

The only witnesses were Mr. Timothy Jones of the University of Washington Press, and Mr. Paul Jacques of the University of Quebec Press. Both have declined to comment on the situation.

click

[subliminal message]

YOU WILL JOIN THE BOYD COLLECTIVE

CASTLE GATE rolls down, obliterating CAMERA 1 in the process.

RETURN TO Q

Q looks down at the worn-out Toshiba laptop. He cautiously lifts up its keyboard, causing it to SCREAM and run off the set.

"Values," he mutters. "Don't they teach values in the schools?"

He looks at the camera. "Now where was I?"

THUNDER is heard. The clouds part, and a head pops out accompanied by a angelic-sounding chorus.

DETACHED HEAD: "The readers."

Q: "Oh, yes. The readers."

A BIG GREEN BUTTON™ appears. Q PUSHES it.

(At high speed, as if being re-wound)

HEAD zips back into clouds, accompanied by sounds of choir singing backwards. THUNDER sounds strange. LAPTOP runs backward onto set. GATE rolls up. CAMERA 1 is un-crushed. TITLE MESSAGE scrolls backwards. GATE falls back down. Q's PANTS drop and rise as he falls into LAWN CHAIR. VOICE says "Shit" backwards. Several sheep abuse a Scotsman. VOICE proclaims that PLANET is KYNES' illegitimate son.

(Large period of static, as if a large asteroid hit the satellite)

E-D reattaches in reverse. FIRST INTERGALACTIC PODRACE takes place backwards. GEORGE OF THE JUNGLE becomes un-stuck from hood of the GENERAL LEE. TIMOTHY JONES leaves his head on the bridge of the USS JELLYCO. HEADCRAB falls off of Kenny. Scientists run backwards through Black Mesa. SHAGGY jumps into SCOOBY-DOO's arms. DAPHNE looks confused. Freddy trips and falls backwards into Mystery Machine. AUTHOR deletes himself. CRAYZ9000 re-takes control.

(TAPE stops with loud screeching sounds)

Q BLINKS, looks around.

"Anyway," he begins, "Where was I?"

HEAD smites Q with a thunderbolt.

END TEASER


	2. The Next Generation

THIRTY YEARS LATER...

**Chapter Two: The Next Generation**

"Here we are," Jacen said from the cockpit of the Hapan transport ship _Rock Dragon_. Beside him sat his new wife, Tenel Ka. "Naboo." He finished.

"Yes, I know you wanted our honeymoon location to be a surprise, honey," the Dathomirian said as she blinked her grey-green eyes, "but why Naboo?"

Jacen was obviously taken aback by her statement. "Well..." He paused, thinking for words. "It's the only world that the New Jedi Order authors have ignored so far." Catching her unforgiving stare, he hesitantly continued. "Besides, my grandmother was born here. Did you know that she was queen of this planet at age eleven?"

She was obviously not convinced. "Sure," she said with a tone as bored as she could make it, looking out of the viewport with a forlorn stare. Indeed, she was in the same position by the time Jacen set the _Rock Dragon_ down in the capital city that the author conveniently forgot the name of.

"Well?" Jacen asked impatiently, turning toward the exit. "Aren't you going to come with me into the capital city that the author conveniently forgot the name of?"

"Sure," Tenel Ka tried to say as cheerfully as possible, but only managed to come out with a tone that sounded as if she had ended up tripping over the coffin at a funeral.

As the couple debarked their starship, they were suddenly confronted by a horde of angry (and horny) Gungans. Jacen promptly ignited his lightsaber, and then proceeded to cut a path through the crowd. Tenel Ka grimaced as a pair of Gungan testicles impacted against her lizard-hide armor with a messy _splat_, but continued to follow Jacen. Somewhere behind her, a pair of worker droids were supposed to be unloading the luggage, but they were completely engulfed in the crowd.

When they had finally breached the spaceport walls and left the angry crowd of Gungans behind, Jacen deactivated his lightsaber and pulled out a map.

"You know where we're going, right?" he asked his wife, who simply nodded in response. Nodding himself, he crumpled the parchment map into a ball and threw it into a convenient waste receptacle.

He didn't see the blatantly obvious figure that was trying desperately to be inconspicuous as it followed them.

"_This_ is the place we're staying? Good God, Jacen, my pet rancor has better tastes!"

The edifice that Tenel Ka had so eloquently described towered before the couple, five stories high at a minimum. Many windows were covered in plywood (for the sake of keeping the cost of this book down) and the ones that were not covered so had ugly cracks in them. Many fake spiderwebs hung from balconies, lending a phony air of creepiness to the former Royal Palace.

"I don't see what's wrong with it," Jacen replied. "See those webs? They're spun by a particular breed of highly poisonous spiders native to this planet..."

"Jacen?" Tenel Ka flatly asked.

"What?"

"The webs. They're fake."

"Uh..." He looked at the building again. "Yeah, that's what I meant to say."

She only glared at him.

Their room proved to be in even worse shape than the building itself. As Tenel Ka forlornly looked about the room, she observed that the bathroom door was hanging at an angle, one of its hinges having been blasted at some indeterminate time in the past. The vanity mirror had a large crack running diagonally through it. The vanity itself was not in much better shape, with many insect holes bored through it. In addition, a real spiderweb adorned a far corner, and Tenel Ka wondered with a morbid curiousity if it really was made by an extremely poisonous species of spider. She decided not to test for herself, and looked at the bed.

The Dathomirian nearly fainted.

The bedspread looked as if a Bantha had decided to use it to clean up after it took a crap. The floral pattern, while still vaguely visible, was mostly covered by a layer of unrecognizably brown stuff that she didn't bother to guess as to the origins of.

Grimacing, she turned around to order one of the droids to clean it - and then noticed that they were not there.

"Jacen," she asked in a somewhat panicked tone of voice, "where is the luggage?"

"What?" he replied absentmindedly, having been inspecting some unidentifiable creature that resided in the corner. "Luggage? I thought the droids had it-"

"They're not here."

"Blaster bolts!" he shouted, and proceeded to tear out the door, which fell with a resounding crash. He ignored it and continued running toward the turbolift.

The turbolift, as he neared it, decided that it was the perfect time to go kaputz. With a great screeching and grinding of gears, it ground to a halt bare meters from the fifth floor.

"Guess I take the stairs," Jacen muttered, yanking open the emergency exit door and scaring approximately 1.5 million spiders. They split in all directions as he hit them with a wave of Force-induced fear, allowing him to dash down the rickety steps.

Halfway down, Jacen stopped suddenly, allowing his shadow to fly through the brick wall and crash three stories to the street, where it was promptly abused by the remaining Gungans. Sighing with relief, he then continued without the shadow.

At the bottom, the door simply would not budge no matter how hard Jacen pushed. He finally pulled out a skeleton key and inserted it, but with no further luck.

The he noticed a large red lever marked "PULL IN CASE OF STUCK DOOR."

He pulled it, and pulled it hard.

The lever did several things. First, a large tree trunk fell from an unknown location, impacted the door, and carried it several hundred meters through a giant stained glass window. Second, all the stair steps aligned themselves at forty-five degree angles. Third, an ancient-looking Scotsman astride a sheep rode out of the chamber the log had come from, and began to slide down the steeply inclined steps, screaming in an unknown language.

At that point, Jacen decided that discretion was the better part of valour. He turned tail and ran for all the Force could give him.

The Scotsman slammed into the wall at nearly twenty kilometers per hour. The sheep never made it, but quite dizzy the Scotsman managed to peel himself off the wall. He turned, and promptly stuck his head in a toilet that had appeared to his right.

This is the way Jacen found the Scotsman a half-hour later, although he personally had no luck in finding the lost droids.

After giving a double-take to the Scotsman, he jumped straight up the stairwell to the fifth floor.

"No luck?" Tenel Ka inquired as Jacen half walked, half tripped into the room.

"Don't ask," he replied, throwing himself onto the bed that Tenel Ka had managed to make into a somewhat respectable state of cleanliness.

She silently nodded, closed the now-fixed door, and began to pull off her testicle-spattered armor. As she was undressing, she turned to Jacen and tried to start a conversation.

"What happened with Danni Quee, anyway? You never told me."

Throwing her a slightly annoyed glance that he immediately regretted, Jacen slowly responded. "I never had anything going for her - I just rescued her from Helska and got out of there."

"She acted like there was something."

Jacen groaned. "Maybe she had a crush on me. What can I say? She's a blond."

Tenel Ka stopped, her armor only halfway off. "Do you mean that you married me only because I'm a redhead?"

"I never said that."

She quickly finished taking the armor off, then proceeded to unbraid her hair. But just as she was getting into the bed beside Jacen, there was a knock on the door.

"Aw kriff," Jacen cursed, "an hour into our honeymoon and we can't even get some peace? Kriff this." He threw open the door (prompting a slight scream from Tenel Ka, who buried herself under the marginally clean sheets) and glared at the alien who had knocked.

"Vong, huh? Go away," he shouted, slamming the door in the warrior's face. With it closed, he began to turn around to head back to bed, but another knock of the door pushed that idea aside.

"What is it?" Jacen angrily asked, wondering at the Vong's appearance. It was dressed - oddly enough - in a black suit, and carried some sort of book under its arm. Beside it was an equally black bicycle. The Jedi only glared more. "Can't you see I'm trying to make love with my wife?"

"Heathen!" the Vong shouted, opening the book up and thrusting it beneath Jacen's nose. "But fear not - Yun-Shuna will cure you of your heathen tastes! Read what Shuna IV, book three verse one has to say of your condition! 'For-'"

"Kriff you!" Jacen promptly cut off the Shunan missionary, and slammed the door again. When another knock came, he ignored it and proceeded to walk to the bed. But before he could get in, an even louder knock was heard that threatened to break the entire building.

"Now what?" the Jedi stormed, throwing open the door in a fit of rage.

"'-when thou mustest-'"

Jacen pulled out a crystal of kryptonite and shoved it down the Vong's throat, slammed the door once more, and walked back to the bed. Then he handed Tenel Ka a set of earmuffs, and got into the bed with her.

This time, the knock was felt more than it was heard. Extremely pissed off, Jacen stormed back, pulled out his lightsaber, then opened the door.

"'-anger has no place in the sight of the gods-'" was all that Jacen allowed the Shunan missionary to say before he decapitated it. He then gave the dead Vong a hearty kick to the pelvis before slamming the door and returning to bed, wondering how the alien could have spoken with a large kryptonite crystal jammed in its throat.

The carcass of the Vong slammed into a large purple dinosaur that was unlucky to be standing behind. Its inertia carried the dinosaur back into the turbolift shaft, where it fell the full height of the building before coming to a stop. At the bottom, the Scotsman pulled his head out of the toilet full of beer long enough to determine what the new arrival was before he stuck his head back in.


	3. Pile it Higher and Deeper

**Chapter Three: Pile it Higher and Deeper**

Boyd looked about himself nervously, but his anxious scans found nothing that was out of the ordinary. Or at least /seemed/ out of the ordinary. He cautiously walked forward, but the sound of his footsteps resonating on the hard metal deck echoed in his head like thundering drumbeats, so he stopped. His heart pounded so hard that he wondered if anyone else could hear it.

Again, moving quietly he dashed across an open corridor, glancing to both sides as he did so to see if his pursuer was anywhere to be found. Relieved that the coast was clear, he continued down the new corridor, walking down a sloping ramp until he reached a closed blastdoor.

Jonathan looked about for a control panel, but found none. While he was looking, he heard a slight clink coming from behind, and spun about rapidly, looking back up the corridor. Somehow, a gear had come loose from something and had rolled down the corridor. He was relieved that it was only a gear, but even that put him more on edge. /Something/ had to have dislodged that gear, although after a few moments he concluded that it could have easily been a droid.

Feeling with his hands, he finally located the hidden control panel for the blastdoor, and pressed ever so gently. The panel clicked softly and slid aside, revealing the door controls. It was obvious that the designers didn't want anyone to find it easily. Boyd pressed several buttons in sequence as he had for some other blastdoors, but it didn't seem to work for this one. He felt like sighing, but didn't want to make any sound that would alert his attacker to his presence. Instead, he tried another sequence on the control panel, and was finally rewarded as the heavy door began to open.

Boyd jumped through before it had finished opening, and was all too aware of the sound his boots made as they landed on the metallic deck. But he had to continue. So he walked softly (or as softly as possible with the hard-soled military-issue boots) to the side where he suspected another control panel was hidden. He felt around, finally feeling an area where the wall yielded to his touch, and pressed firmly. The panel popped open, and he quickly re-entered the same sequence he'd used to open the blastdoor. With a slight groan of metal on metal, the door began to slide closed.

He wanted to breathe a sigh of relief, but the realization that his enemy could be anywhere prevented him from doing so. Anxiously, he looked about himself to see if there were hidden cameras, but his inquisitive gaze turned up nothing. It didn't really surprise him, of course. If the designers had put cameras in, they would have hidden them so well that it would take a dedicated scanning crew extra time to find them. But he did notice the targeting sensors for the automatic shootback systems, and inwardly sighed. That meant that the tiny holdout blaster he carried was useless, as he couldn't fire it without alerting the computer systems, and that in turn would mean that his enemy could find him.

As stealthily as he thought possible, he continued down the corridor in search of something that might help him. Certainly, Boyd didn't like being trapped aboard the station; he didn't even know where he was by now. To make a bad situation worse, he had some insane homicidal maniac chasing after him with an Improbability Cannon. That by itself was enough to drive most people insane, but he was Boyd. A Boyd would overcome, no matter the odds.

Over fifty kilometers away, another person was in a similar situation, except that he was trying to find Boyd. For those concerned with names and appearances, his name was Liet. He stood about 5'11", fairly average for humans in this galaxy, and wasn't much to look at. Well, to be specific he was something to look at, if only because of his strange hair and the way he dressed. It was like a flat-top cut except that it had a strange protrusion of hair at the front. Liet had asked for it that way because of someone he'd seen on an old Terran broadcast. Carrey, he thought the person's name was. Damn, but that guy had been such a sex machine to all the chicks!

Liet couldn't figure out why the chicks didn't seem to like him, though. He had tried everything so far. First there was the Jim Carrey hairdo, which he'd gotten at a Supercuts on some planet whose name he'd forgotten. On the advice of a gypsy, he'd found some Winchell's donut cologne, the byproduct of an endeavour to get more police officers to frequent Winchell's. The gypsy had said that it would make him immensely more popular, but so far the only increase in his popularity he'd noticed was among the ants. Oh well. He still had five complementary bottles of the stuff, and he sure wasn't going to waste it.

That wasn't all he had, though. (Liet wasn't a nudist.) When he had attended the University of Agamar, a man by the name of Winston Ashford Gonzalez had suggested some dress tips, which he'd taken. The first thing had been an old-fashioned tobacco pipe, which he never used for its intended purpose. The second thing that Winston had suggested for him to do was to get rid of his old brown robes and get a new, hip jacket. The only problem was that the suit shop nearest the university was out of leather jackets, so he'd been forced to settle for a grey tweed jacket with leather elbow patches. The jacket itself was one size too small, which looked a little funny. Liet didn't mind, though, because it made his arm muscles look larger, and biceps always turned the chicks on.

Then there was the one final bit of advice that Winston had given him: Trojan. Ah, the Trojans. He never went anywhere without them; they were more useful than an American Express card (which he also had). Unlike the Viagra that he carried in case of emergencies, the Trojans had so many uses, including balloon, makeshift water bottle, helium container (so that he could speak in an unnaturally high voice), and disease/pregnancy shield. Liet considered them more useful than a Swiss army knife, and he kept one of those as well.

Liet didn't wear any hat. He said that it would mess up his hairdo. He spent nearly three hours every morning getting it just right, and hats only messed that up by matting the hair down and building up copious quantities of sweat. To steal a line from the Borg, "hats are irrelevant."

At the moment, he was sitting in a large room whose function he was unsure of. He removed the tobacco pipe from his mouth (he didn't actually smoke; it was for purely ornamental purposes) and stuffed it in his inner shirt pocket. Then he reached beside his chair and, with both arms, hefted a vaguely phallic-looking object. Liet liked to say that he'd created it himself, although that wasn't really accurate. He had purchased the rights to the device from someone named Douglas Adams, and then had some factory in Bangladesh produce it. To him, it was a work of art, complete with zoom night-vision scope, ivory-inlaid handlegrip, and a bunch of other options that he hadn't bothered to learn. The best thing about it was that it never needed to be recharged, and didn't use any ammo.

Seeing an errant bat fly across the other side of the room, Liet hefted the phallic object, aimed it in the general direction of the bat, and pulled the trigger. A spot on the wall beside the bat suddenly glowed with purple polka-dots, and a fountain of port began to spurt out of the wall. Ignoring the fine wine, Liet aimed again, more carefully this time, and struck the bat with the invisible beam. The bat turned into a giant toaster and crashed into the ground.

Liet grinned, lowering the phallic weapon and picking up a wineglass. He walked over to the port fountain and filled his glass, then walked back and sat down again.

He would get Boyd, eventually. But he had more pressing matters to attend to first. He pulled the pipe out of his pocket again, filled it from the wineglass, and began to sip out of it. _My, this is excellent port_, Liet decided as he continued sipping from the pipe. Boyd could certainly wait.

Jonathan ducked under a convenient protrusion as a squad of stormtroopers walked past. He quickly thanked George Lucas that all stormtroopers had tunnel-vision before getting back up. Looking at the departing troopers, though, Jonathan decided that it would be better if he looked like a stormtrooper. He quietly walked up behind the last of the troopers, then suddenly grabbed him, throwing him to the floor. The trooper struggled vainly as Boyd pulled his helmet off, then punched him quite hard in the face. It didn't take long for Jonathan to remove the rest of the trooper's clothing. When he had finished, he dragged the trooper to a garbage chute, kicked the grating in, and shoved the trooper down it. He felt a momentary pang for the stormtrooper-after all, Federation doctrines said that one was not to harm the enemy if at all possible-but dismissed it. After all, it would be the /Imperial/ garbage compactor that would harm the trooper, not him.

Quickly, Boyd put on the trooper's armor suit, then continued down the corridor. Mercifully, nobody else was walking in it, which Jonathan found surprising considering that the Death Star was purported by the evil Warsie trolls to have several billion troopers. Ah, well. Another victory for Star Trek.

After consuming his wine, Liet looked about himself. Nothing had really changed in the room, save for the growing pool of wine on the floor. Noticing that the pool was getting closer to his chair, he decided that it was a good time to leave. Picking up his phallic weapon and wineglass, Liet set out again in search of his quarry.

The first thing he did was to step into the Disco Star's central control room. As he stepped inside, the troops came to attention instantly (one standing so fast that he accidentally hit the firing button, obliterating a random planet) and saluted. Liet ignored them. They were only clones, after all, and not really deserving of his attention. Instead, he walked to the security terminal and checked the day's logs. Nothing noteworthy was displayed... hmm...

Ah, there it was. A garbage compactor on level 5183 had a grate destroyed. Liet instantly assumed that Boyd was responsible, even though the grate could have been destroyed for any number of reasons (but the author's wish to keep the quantity of overly descriptive text down may have had something to do with Liet's decision). So Liet struck a very strange pose, one hand over his willy, and spoke into the Disco Star's PA system.

"Ah!" The goggles of a technician shattered from the intense sound pressure. Liet always liked to have it set to maximum, just for effect. "Boyd, I have you at last. Prepare to die." He twisted the gain knob slightly, resulting in an intense whine that shattered almost every display in the control room. Liet loved the gain control. It was great for unnerving those who dared to oppose him. He cackled wildly.

Boyd briefly shuddered as he heard the Disco Star's PA system come to life. There was but one thing that could mean, so he dove for the nearest airlock, not caring if he was nearly a hundred kilometers from the outer shell of the massive battlestation. If he'd heard Liet's insane rantings once, he'd heard them a hundred times. Never mind the sheer volume of his announcements.

Once Jonathan figured that enough time had elapsed to allow Liet to finish his announcement, he crawled back out of the airlock.

"Oh, you thought you could outsmart me, Boyd. But fear not: I will be coming after you shortly! Muhahaha."

Boyd shook his head. He hated Liet, although nobody would ever know why. Another secret of the Boyd.

After several minutes of aimless walking, Jonathan thought for a second that he smelled donuts. His mouth began to drool, although once he realized that there was only one person on the battlestation with donut cologne, the saliva instantly vanished.

He quickly looked in all directions, but didn't see anything. As he doubled his pace, Boyd couldn't help but hear his feet clanking loudly against the metal deck. That was a definite downside to the stormtrooper armor, and he kind of wished that he was still wearing his Federation uniform. It was a lot quieter in this kind of situation.

For no reason whatsoever, Boyd jumped out of the way. He liked to think that he had Jedi powers, but Luke Skywalker had disagreed with him so many times that he'd lost count. Eventually Boyd had given up on trying to enter the Jedi Academy (the prosthetic leg that he now had might have been a consideration-he'd received it after challenging a nine-year-old Jedi trainee and getting his real leg removed).

Still, jumping randomly did have its benefits, as an improbability beam missed him narrowly, turning a stormtrooper down the hallway into a giant cream puff. Boyd knelt for a moment to pray. The random number generator must have been smiling on him.

Another improbability beam disturbed him from his reverie, and his armor somehow turned into a ballet dress. Boyd ignored it; it could still deflect fifty-pound rocks thrown by Ewoks as good as stormtrooper armor, so it wasn't like it made much difference. He pirouetted across the corridor, narrowly avoiding more improbability beams as he did so.

Jonathan quickly exited into a turbolift, and was mildly alarmed when the durasteel door turned into a sheet of candy glass. He stabbed at a random button on the control panel, and was rewarded as the computer gave him a perfectly random effect. In this case, nothing. He threw himself through the candy glass door, which shattered spectacularly, and rolled across the corridor, only to bump into the legs of an elephant. The elephant roared, and at that point Boyd decided that it would be a good idea to get away from there.

Another beam narrowly missed him, and so it was that Boyd was somewhat shocked as the elephant stood up on its two hind legs and began singing Elvis-style. He ignored it, however, and started running.

After several minutes, though, Boyd noticed that he really wasn't running anywhere. Looking down, he saw that the floor beneath him had been turned into a treadmill. That wasn't good. He spun about quickly, only to see Liet lining up for the perfect shot.

He dropped to the floor.

Liet fired.

The blast whizzed over his head (it might have had to do with the fact that Boyd was carrying the Blarney stone with him) and hit a wall. Jonathan blinked. It seemed like nothing had happened to the wall.

At least, before a Mack semi came barreling _through_ it.

Boyd pressed himself against the wall of the corridor to avoid getting hit by the speeding tractor. Then, realizing that if something had come through it...

He ran for the wall as fast as he could, jumping a pace before he would hit it, and sailed straight through.


	4. and deeper still

**Chapter Four: ... And Deeper Still**

"Where am I?" Boyd asked a passing driver, not caring if the landspeeder was moving at 120 kilometers per hour.

"You're on Interstate 101 in downtown Theed," the driver replied with a strange Doppler effect.

"Ah, thanks. Cheerio," Boyd replied, looking about him and sidestepping another passing landspeeder with unusual grace. He heard movement behind him somehow (never mind the ambient freeway noise) and quickly turned about to see Liet lining up for another shot.

[WE INTERRUPT THIS FANFIC FOR AN IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FROM OUR SPONSORS]

"Hi, I'm Frank Earnest for Victoria's Secret, and I've got an interesting story to tell you. My former girlfriend was Kelly Young, and she makes some of the most delicious apple jam you've ever tasted. Well, last Valentine's Day, I sent her a card telling her that I really enjoyed her jelly because it loosened up an otherwise boring day. But her mother read the card, and I really got plunged into deep shit. So, next Valentine's Day, just remember to get Victoria's Secret for your significant other. Hey, at least you can always say that it belongs to somebody named Victoria!"

(Scantily clad models have been snipped for the sake of cost)

[THIS HAS BEEN A PAID POLITICAL ANNOUNCEMENT]

"I really wish they would quit doing that," Liet muttered. "Never fails to screw up my aim." A vehicle on the other side of the highway turned into a giant raspberry as he pulled the trigger on his phallic weapon, which splattered into a red pulp spread across the entire road.

After pausing to scratch his head at the bizarre sentence structure, Liet checked his weapon to make sure that it was still in one piece, then looked down at his Palm VII PDA, and read the message that was displayed on its screen:

The leprechaun hits! -more-

Your purse feels lighter!

"Aw, damn," he muttered again, ignoring the vehicles speeding by only six inches away from him as he reached for his wallet. As he pulled it out of his pocket, however, a passing groundcar struck his arm, causing the wallet to go flying. Muttering an incoherent curse concerning a sheep and Chex cereal, he fired his phallic weapon at the offending groundcar, which instantly plummeted into a bottomless pit and burst into flames at the bottom.

"Kudos to whoever recognizes that irony," Liet commented with a smile on his face as he looked back at the Palm VII, where a new message was displayed:

The leprechaun picks up some gold!

Liet chucked the PDA at a groundcar, cursing as he saw Boyd nab his wallet and run off through the rush-hour traffic. NetHack was terribly frustrating sometimes. It was about time he gave up trying to use it as a predictor of real life.

A groundcar chose that moment to run over his exposed foot.

[WE INTERRUPT THIS FANFIC FOR YET ANOTHER IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT]

2600 Cola. It's the slicer's soda. Drink 2600 Cola.

(Britney Spears is shown drinking a can of 2600 Cola. She manages to spill some on her thin V-cut shirt. The audience gags, then faints.)

[SPONSORED BY CHEESE]

ELSEWHERE

"Tenel Ka?"

"Mmm?" came the response from the other side of the bed.

"I think we're in deep shit."

The redheaded warrior stirred. "Hmm?"

"Just what I mean."

Tenel Ka lifted her head from the pillow, looked at the area surrounding the bed, and flopped back down. For good reason, too. Some rare form of guano had been piled high around the bed, and the reek of the processed matter was enough to knock a Gundark unconscious.

"I think it's from the Naboo pigeon. See that berry seed-"

The Dathomirian quickly interrupted him. "Jacen," she said in a muffled tone due to her head being buried in the pillow, "I think you need to reconsider your choice of career."

He took the clue and shut up.

NEITHERSPACE

A large anvil fell on an unsuspecting coyote. Through a little-known principle that Nikola Tesla discovered, combined with Einstein's Unified Field Theory, it induced a chain reaction that caused 10,294 stars to simultaneously go nova across the googleplex of stars that make up the universe. This in turn created 2,038 new black holes and 2.4 supermassive black holes (the other 6/10ths of a black hole were too unimportant to be counted). A cascading-flux improbability isowave then spread through spacetime, causing 109,388 nerfs to become infected with Mad Nerf Disease. The mad Nerfs staged a protest in front of Mattel Headquarters, armed with small foam dartguns. By the end of the protest, the toy company's headquarters was covered in over a million Nerf darts. Their combined mass caused the building to reach critical mass and collapse in on itself, causing millions of wannabe Jedi to cry out in shock. Their shouts, all centered within the New York Metropolitan Area, knocked several jumbo jetliners off course, which then proceeded to crash into the city's skyline. Jar-Jar Binks, infamous French terrorist, was promptly blamed for the collisions, even though he was engaged in a game of Pong on his Playstation-2 supercomputer at the time. Later, the Ministry of Something Unimportant apologized for the mistaken blame, but their apology never made it to CNN because they were too unimportant. As a result, millions of C4-loaded frogs were sent across the English Channel, even though England is *not* a state of America. The frogs were turned back by a border guard wearing red underwear, who found a quarantined medfly in the stomach of a frog. Indignant, they proceeded back to Paris and tried to blow up the Eiffel Tower, but were unsuccessful as their mini C4 packs were not sufficient to bring the steel to its melting point. Most Parisians thought it was simply a fireworks display celebrating the end of the Mattel Empire, and they joined in the fun by prancing around naked as usual. However, the sight of several thousand naked bearded ladies did not set well with the Q Continuum, who promptly deposited all the French on New Zealand. Their combined weight, however, proved to be too much for the small island to support, and it sank as fast as it could. The displaced magma from the island then caused every volcano in the Pacific Rim of Fire to blow simultaneously. One Mexican farm laborer's comment on the eruption was "Popo goes Poo-Poo!" Somewhere in the Himalayas, a Tibetan monk was quick to ask who farted. That caused Confucius to get up and begin asking people at random what the gravitational constant of the universe was. A superstitious Vulcan then tried to use the Stone of Gol on himself for no particular reason, and phased his nads out of the continuum. When they returned, they ended up in the mouth of a severe malnourised crossbreed who liked to call himself PROMETHEUS. However, the tough Vulcan nuts proved too much to chew, and he spit them out with blinding speed. They tore through several blastdoors, scaring several mouse-droids, and finally landed in front of Seven of Nine. That caused her to reconsider her purpose in life, and she decided to arm herself and hunt down Brannon and Braga. This in turn meant that she would never meet Luke Skywalker, who would then go on to marry some random love interest. And someplace completely random at some random point in time, a redhead giggled and vanished back into the temporal mists.

THEED PALACE

"Did you just feel a disturbance in the Force?"

"You mean as if millions of Frenchmen cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced?" Jacen rhetorically asked.

Tenel Ka nodded. "Exactly."

"I fear it is a time for great rejoicing," he replied in a monotone.

"Whatever," the Dathomirian commented. "Have you figured out why there's all this shit surrounding us?"

"Look up."

She did so, and discovered that the roof was missing from the building. The culprit turned out to be a very large robot, which was standing over and inspecting the contents of the palace. It carefully reached down and plucked a single turkey drumstick from some other part of the palace, then ate it. To top it off, the robot let out a loud belch that blew out all the windows in the palace that weren't already broken.

"Have any idea on what that thing is?" Tenel Ka asked as a flock of pigeons dive-bombed the robot.

Jacen groaned. "It's the Power Rangers' latest Zord or something stupid like that."

"It doesn't have X-ray vision, does it?" She grabbed one of her lizard-hide armor suits, and dove under the covers.

"Not that I know of," he replied as the bed was shaken free of the pigeon guano, moving about an inch out of it. Jacen promptly looked out the window, and Tenel Ka soon did the same.

"Another robot?" she asked.

"Voltron." He watched the large mecha begin walking toward the Power Ranger robot, shaking the city up as it did so. "I think they've got a copyright dispute to settle."

"You bet we do!" the person running the Black Lion shouted in reply.

The show's director popped out of the back of the cockpit. "You aren't supposed to hear Jacen speak," it shouted at the Voltron leader.

"Oh. Sorry, my bad."

"No problem. We'll do that part over again," the director said before realizing that the tape was still rolling. His voice rose to a crescendo that sounded like an egg beater, culminating in his shouting the word "cut" at the top of his lungs. The cameraman simply blinked.

"I should have known better than to hire a deaf assistant," the director (who incidentally was named James Cameron) muttered under his breath. Failing to find a solution, he pulled out a scale model of the Titanic and threw it at the Saban Entertainment Zord. The Titanic split in two and sank, while the Zord unfortunately was not harmed. Cameron scratched his head. That wasn't what the Titanic was supposed to do... or was it?

"Hey, Director, just get your butt back inside. We're going to haul some serious ass here in a moment," the Voltron leader shouted somewhere toward the posterior of his lion.

INTERSTATE 101 - DOWNTOWN THEED

"Drat that Boyd," Liet muttered as he hopped along the 101 on his one good foot. That idiot groundcar driver /would/ have had to run over his right foot!

"Pardon me, sir," a hovercar driver pulled alongside him and slowed to a halt, "but do you need any assistance?"

"No, and go fuck yourself," Liet replied. If there was one thing he hated more than Boyd, it was these self-righteous "good Samaritans."

"Why, fuck you too, sir," the driver replied in an oddly British accent as he accelerated away, leaving Liet in the middle of a cloud of noxious exhaust fumes. Liet coughed and continued on to Grandma's house...

Oops, wrong story.

COMING NEXT CHAPTER...

Power Rangers vs. Voltron: Live on Pay-Per-View

Little Red Riding Liet

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Dealing with 3 Feet of Pigeon Droppings

What does all this have to do with chicken and a crossdressing Swede?


	5. A New Dork

**Chapter Five: A New Dork**

"CUT!" Cameron shouted as Voltron beheaded the Zord. Time suddenly screeched to a halt relative to the story. In the meantime, the director took a turbolift up to the Black Lion's control room.

"Look," he tried explaining to the pilot, "it's supposed to be more... _interesting_ than that. Kick them a few times, let yourself get hit once or twice."

"But we've got this cool energy sword that can kill them in a single hit..." the pilot complained.

"It's not that," Cameron explained. "It's the drama."

"Oh, right, I forgot," the pilot replied sarcastically. "It doesn't matter how many casualties we suffer, we can always come back from the dead and kill them."

"Exactly!" James shouted enthusiastically.

The pilot sighed, pulled out his sidearm, and put a bullet through Cameron's head. The erstwhile director crumpled to the floor, and the story resumed.

The Zord continued its not-so-stately fall as gravity returned...

Jacen grabbed Tenel Ka and leaped over the pigeon guano, over the wall that bordered everything, as a large shadow appeared over them...

The oversized, overweight mecha slammed into Theed Palace, obliterating the centuries-old building instantly...

Using the Force to slow his fall in a dramatic manner that a Jedi Master would have been hard-pressed to do (but that fact was conveniently forgotten) Jacen landed about a mile from the crushed palace, and let go of Tenel Ka, who immediately covered her exposed breasts and glared at him.

"What do you think this is?" she demanded. "Some kind of porno fic?"

"Hey, Princess," Jacen retorted half-sarcastically, "it was either grab you then or let you get crushed while you tried to find the right shade of lizard-hide to put on."

"Oh, really?" Tenel Ka sniffed. "That hack bounty hunter Johan held up a collapsing skyscraper that was larger than that wimpy robot. What makes you think I couldn't do the same?"

"It's just what the Story requires," Jacen said, obviously miffed. "And don't mention that guy again."

"Why not?" she retorted. "It's not like I even know him, unlike you and Danni..."

"Shut up."

The air was silent (as if it could be anything else) for a strangely poignant moment. Then:

"Is this yours?" Tenel Ka held up a yellow book, which had "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Dealing with Three Feet of Pigeon Droppings" inscribed on its cover.

"You know," Jacen muttered after a moment, "I'm beginning to regret marrying you, even if you are really good in bed."

"Didn't I just tell you that this isn't supposed to be a porno fic? Come on, Jacen, you should know that some of the people reading this are underage..."

"Just like we were, that one night at the Academy?"

"OK, that's it. One more crack like that, and I'm calling Ken Starr."

"Are you kidding me? I have Johnny Cochran on my holonet speed-dial."

Tenel Ka rolled her eyes. "Well, at least that explains the astronomical holonet bills we've been getting lately."

"Now who's wisecracking?"

[Elsewhere]

"This is Black Mesa News, your one source for news on events in the facility. In our top story today, renowned hero Gordon Freeman has died at age 104. The cause of death was allegedly auto-fellatio, although many scientists here have expressed severe doubts about the likelihood of such a method at Freeman's old age..."

[No, the OTHER elsewhere]

"And now, here is what President Kennedy has to say about the situation unfolding in Vietnam."

Instead of the President speaking, there was a shotgun blast, and a different person stepped up to the camera.

"Regretfully," he began, "the President is unable to comment on the current situation."

"What the hell?" the anchor almost shouted.

"I am Captain Percy Freeman," the new voice continued, not caring about what the news anchors thought, "formerly of the United States Marine Corps. I'm afraid that I bring troubling news; the rumors of an undead army in Vietnam are all too true. A space-craft, carrying alien life forms, crashed in the Vietnamese jungle some years ago. They were the start of this epidemic."

A door crashed open, and someone shouted "Stop!"

"I'm afraid that will be quite unnecessary, and indeed, impossible," Percy continued. "The zombies, as you call them, are not alive by our standards. If you use nuclear weapons on them, they will just come back twice as strong. If you dismember them, bury them, burn them, they will return stronger. I am afraid that this world is doomed." An evil grin spread across his face. "And I will be in charge of it. Muhahahaha!"

[Space, near this elsewhere, same time]

"Commence primary ignition," Grand Moff Tarkin ordered. At last, the last of the Yuuzhan Vong abominations had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide...

The blue-green world vanished in a fiery blaze. Somewhere nearby, James T. Kirk of the Millennium Enterprise was bound for that same destination...

At least, he was bound for Earth before everything came to a screeching halt.

[On-Air Control Center]

"Damnit, Q, don't you even know how to handle a goddamn remote?" the author shouted. "Stupid know-it-all godlike beings..."

[I think this is the right one...]

**Epilogue**

My apologies to:

Sierra Studios (Half-Life)

The makers of the Heart of Evil mod, for the aforementioned game

Monty Python

Saban Entertainment (Power Rangers)

The makers of Voltron

James Cameron (the director, that is)

2600 Magazine

Britney Spears (huh? Why am I apologizing for that?)

Mattel Corporation

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (more easily remembered as insane morons... I mean Mormons)

Anyone named Chad

Robin Hood: Men in Tights

Toshiba Corporation

Douglas Adams

The NetHack DevTeam

[Then again, maybe not.]

"Jesus H. Christ on a fucking inflatable porcupine, will you get on with the story already?" Liet swore as he dodged through the rush-hour traffic on the 101, which was now especially jammed with people who wanted to see what had happened to the former Royal Palace.

"You'll get damned to Hell for cussing like that," Boyd reminded him before realizing which end of the improbability cannon was pointed where.

"Like Hell I will!" Liet shouted, ripping off the stupid red hood that he was somehow wearing, and leveling out the improbability cannon at Boyd. "Give up now or die, hatfucker."

Boyd looked nonplussed. "Can I point out that you're standing in the middle of a traffic lane?"

Liet looked down in horror, then to his right. His eyes widened...

And moments later, in an amazing deus ex machina, a hovercar came by at around 200 kilometers per hour and took Liet with it... or perhaps took him on its bumper.

Boyd knelt down and offered a quick prayer before running like hell.


	6. We Forgot The Title

**Chapter Six: We Forgot The Title, But We'll Be Back To You Shortly After These Important Announcements From Our Sponsors**

"JAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEN!"

A head suddenly popped up from behind a stack of spare flux capacitors and other miscellaneous parts. As Jacen's head emerged, it knocked a small guizinshou off the top of the pile, which slid down and managed to start a small avalanche of sorts. That is, it would be an avalanche if you replaced the snow with Gundam suit parts, Mr. Fusion units, leather whips, the Ark of the Covenant, ancient 8088 laptop computers, and so much other cruft that it would take up eighteen pages just to give it an overview. And that's not even going into descriptions of the cruft in question.

Well, suffice it to say that Jacen's head popped up from beneath a monumental pile of junk. "What?"

Tenel Ka, standing on the other side of the room, simply glared indignantly at her husband. Although they were technically still married, for some reason both appeared the same way they had when they were 14, and she was wearing a rather garish (and skimpy) neon green trimmed sailor or schoolgirl uniform that Jacen had never seen the likes of before.

Maybe that was just as well, considering how pissed Tenel Ka seemed to be.

"Would you care to explain why I'm suddenly wearing this useless thing?"

Jacen shrugged, starting another minor avalanche. "Beats me. It's not like it reveals much more than your usual lizardskin getup."

Her face nearly went as red as her hair, and she started to lunge before something tackled her... leg. Feeling a curious sensation, she glanced down and noticed a one-armed, partly robotic fox trying desperately to hump her shoe. Her rage suddenly found a new channel, and within seconds the fox found itself floating in front of her, gasping for breath.

"So now what? Our author's gone furry?" she asked no-one in particular.

"I-f I... can... explain..." the fox gasped.

"Sure you can." The fox suddenly found itself making like a football as it sailed through a plate glass window and down the next eleven stories. A vaguely fox-like pit suddenly appeared in the ground below. "Now where were we?"

"I think you were about to lynch me for some reason that I have no clue about," Jacen replied.

"Oh. That. Thanks." Tenel Ka resumed her stately lunge toward the pile of junk. However, she stopped again when badly-done kung fu cries, mixed with Japanese curses, began coming from the corridor outside the room, and looked quizzically at Jacen. "Didn't Voltron already take care of the Power Rangers?"

"Thought so." Jacen extricated himself from the pile and made his way to the door, then opened it. "WILL YOU SHUT UP ALREADY?" The Renegade Rangers, as well as the Sailor Senshi, suddenly looked very embarassed and began apologizing profusely before leaving the area. But Jacen took a second glance before he closed the door. "Hey, those Japanese girls out there are wearing the same thing you're wearing..." He opened the door again. "And one of them... the one wearing green... well... she-"

The sound that followed that remark is rather impossible to describe. Think of the sound an elephant makes when it farts. Add in an exploding planet, the drone of a B-29, and the sound that Jerry Falwell makes when his bullshit reaches critical density, and you might have a rough approximation. Its effects, however, are at least easier to describe. Put simply, Jacen found himself pinned to the floor, or rather pinned into the floor.

"What, was it something I said?"

The Dathomirian and sometime Hapan princess grinned, strange and dangerous forces playing across her face. "You bet it was." She lunged at him, locking her lips to his as if the their heads had been stuck in a Vise-Grip(TM). The couple rolled back, Jacen grunting as he was wrenched out of his Jacen-shaped hole in the floor, and became rather tangled. Gradually, although they were losing several items of clothing, they stood up and wound up falling onto the nearby bed in a somewhat disorganized heap, lips still locked. Clothing continued to come off and go every which way, exposing-

[We interrupt this scene to remind you that this fanfic does not have a rating, and as such the editing staff does not give a flying Gundark shit as to what is in it. However, the thought police have decreed that the following scenes shall not be shown. Sig Heil!]

-anyway, after the missing scenes, Tenel Ka disengaged her lips from Jacen's. Both drew in deep breaths of air (although they had been breathing the whole time, the nasal passages just aren't enough sometimes) and laughed.

Jacen rolled over on the bed so that Tenel Ka was lying on top of him. "So are you still angry with me?"

Tenel Ka looked at him strangely. "Yes," she deadpanned, then broke out into more laughter before locking lips with him again. They rolled about-

[The following scenes are left as an exercise for the reader's imagination.]

-and some time later fell onto the floor. Jacen shook his head, knocking off the light green miniskirt that had somehow found its way there. "Where was the story?"

There was a long pause, although not at all uncomfortable, before the Hapan princess replied. "I don't know."

Jacen shrugged, moving his hands around his wife's shoulders-

[We're not trying to censor this fic. Really.

*sound of a pin dropping*

... oh bollocks, they're on to us. All hands, abandon ship.]

GENERIC FUNDIE MOTHER: (Infuriated) I knew it! The author is trying to pollute the morals of our youths by portraying acts of fornication between two fictional characters! Burn the heathen!

GENERIC FUNDIE MOTHER 2: (Very Infuriated) Besides, in the beginning of this part of the story the author mentions how the characters are only 14! How can they be married if they're that age? And I'll bet it wasn't even a proper church wedding. Probably some fly-by-night wedding chapel in Las Vegas...

JACEN: (irritated) Look-

[JACEN is cut off by GENERIC FUNDIE MOTHER 2.]

GENERIC FUNDIE MOTHER 2: Now don't you talk to me in that tone of voice, young man. You're not even half my age. You probably believe that we evolved from apes, too. [GFM2 makes a big deal of spitting on the ground] Get behind me, Satan!

[TENEL KA walks up and looks GFM2 square in the face]

TENEL KA: You're just another hypocrite, not wanting to actually do what you believe. [She sniffs the air] Why does your breath smell salty, anyway?

GFM2: Why, the hussy-

TENEL KA: And I'll bet you spend most of your day sealed up in your bedroom, your only company a little piece of plastic. You were probably so abused as a child that you can't even get a single orgasm.

GFM2: (offended) I'll show you, you little upstart! [GFM2 dashes off to her CAR and comes back with a BRASS DILDO. Much to the horror of GFM1 (and GFM2's CHILDREN), she begins pleasuring herself with it in full view of everyone.]

TENEL KA: All too easy. [she WALKS AWAY, hitting the IDIOM-

-switch on her way back to the room. Jacen broke out into laughter. "I can't believe you just did that."

She shot him a hungry look. "You'd better believe it." The two locked lips again, walking back to their room. When they got there, the holoscreen was on for some reason...

[03:14] crayz9000: But I like thin ice :)

[03:14] astrid Yup, ice is getting thinner by the moment ;)

[03:14] crayz9000: *dons wetsuit*

[03:14] astrid: Ice is crackin'...

[03:14] crayz9000: *runs like hell*

[03:14] astrid: *SPLASH*

[03:15] crayz9000: Oooh, a shark. Can I pet him? Please? Pretty please?

[03:15] astrid: LOL

[03:16] astrid: Well, you can certainly try petting him, but...

[03:16] crayz9000: No! Bad shark! No! Sharky let go of my arm!

[03:16] astrid: Uh oh..I'm seeing blood!

[03:17] astrid: Down Sharky, down!

[03:17] crayz9000: *commercial ends*

[03:17] astrid: *claps*

[03:17] crayz9000: And that, kids, is an example of late-night humor.

[03:18] astrid: And we'll be back to you after this brief commerical break...annndd...*repeat*...*cackles*...I dont even know what I am typing anymore :D

[03:18] crayz9000: lololol

[03:18] astrid: heheheheheheheh

[03:18] crayz9000: Now pardon me while I go remove this piranha from my thumb...

[03:18] crayz9000: (What do you mean, we're on air?)

"Who turned it to the lamer channel?" Jacen asked when they'd disengaged again. "O-M-G, I'm so like L-O-L! Ha-ha. Lemme find something that's not quite as clichéd."

Tenel Ka snatched the remote control from him. "Let me help you." She switched the holoscreen off, and the two dove into the bed.

[A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far-

"You dolt," an editor muttered, deep in his lair near the Mohorovic discontinuity. "From that perspective, it should be a long time in the future, in a galaxy that they shouldn't even know exists yet..."

At that point, the author realized the benefits of sleep, and decided to give into his body's urges.


	7. There Is No Seven

**Chapter Seven: There is no Seven. No, I mean there is no six.**

NARRATOR: (tired) Oh just get on with it already.

ANNOUNCER: Well, if there is no six, then what was the chapter before this one?

NARRATOR: Five point five?

ANNOUNCER: That's impossible. You can't have fractions of a chapter.

[the NARRATOR holds up a printed chapter that has been cut to ribbons]

[there is a LONG PAUSE]

ANNOUNCER: You have a point. Well, anyway, what happened to the previous WHOLE chapter if there is no six?

[NARRATOR flips through the script]

NARRATOR: (absorbed) It's here.

ANNOUNCER: What is there?

NARRATOR: The chapter that's between Five and Seven.

[a SHOTGUN BLAST rings out]

[UNCOMFORTABLE SILENCE]

AUTHOR: Um, we're currently accepting resumes for narrator and announcer at the front desk. Full life insurance coverage and benefits. [AUTHOR ducks out]

UNNAMED STAFF: We have a front desk?

[a TRUCK drives up. There is the sound of something heavy being dropped... on someone. SCREAMING follows.]

VOICE: (offscreen) UPS. Synchronizing the world of commerce.

[TRUCK drives off]

[Scene change. We hear swords clanging. Cries of "At 'em!" and "You bastard!" are flying fast and free.]

[FADE IN: A wooded field on Naboo.]

[We see a tired LIET half walking, half skipping through the field. For some reason, there is a GUNGAN following him, clopping two coconut halves together. The GUNGAN carries a pack with a garish flag stuck from the top of it. LIET only carries his IMPROBABILITY GUN. In the distance, a KNIGHT in black duranium armour finishes off yet another weak opponent.]

KNIGHT: Halt. Who dares intrude upon the realm of GUARDIAN 2000?

LIET: Hatfucker. [He GESTURES-

"I need to do something about that goddamned Idiom switch, like maybe take it away from the author," Liet finished. "Now, where were we?"

The Black Knight struck a menacing pose, towering over Liet in his matte black armour. Blood stains cover the armour, and the field is littered with corpses. Then, a voice boomed from beneath the helmet. "Halt. Who dares intrude upon the realm of GUARDIAN 2000?"

Liet smirked. "I have no quarrel with you. I merely seek to pass through here to Theed, so I may seek my revenge upon that whom they call Boyd." His gaze darkened. "But if you get in my way, you asshat, you're gonna regret it."

The knight remains unmoved. "I can prove to you that the so-called 'neutronium' you use is clearly inferior to Star Trek neutronium. You shall not pass, Warsie scum."

At that, Liet's mouth half-opened, and after staring at the knight for several seconds, he burst out laughing. "You? Stop me? You have to be kidding."

"Nonetheless, that is what I shall do," the black knight replied as he took out a piece of paper and began scribbling on it. Then he folded it up into a paper airplane and threw it at Liet. It got stuck in the latter's bizarre hairdo.

"You... hatfucker. Nobody messes with my hair!" Liet pulled the plane out of his hair and unfolded it. After reading it for all of five seconds, he promptly scribbled out a reply on the back side of it, loaded it into his Improbability Cannon (don't ask), aimed the cannon at Guardian 2000, and fired. A beam of pure logic suddenly lanced through DarkStar's left shoulder, severing the limb cleanly. "There, you happy? I've disproven your ludicrous claim. Now stand aside and let me pass."

"What are you talking about?" Guardian 2000 replied indignantly. "You haven't disproven anything. According to George Lucas, the Expanded Univ-"

Another shot from the Improbability Cannon lanced through DarkStar's other shoulder, turning that limb into a frilly pink egg-beater. It whirred menacingly several times.

"Lucasfilm's canon policy is very clear," Liet stated, his teeth gritted. "Your silly word games have no impact on what canon is, and besides, you have no arguments left! Now stand aside!"

"What do you mean, I have no arguments left?" The egg beater whirred menacingly. "You can't prove that the Death Star destroyed Alderaan by just dumping 1E38 joules into it! My Reverse Genesis Effect theory shows that to be false!" Somehow, Guardian 2000 managed to produce a handful of pictures of Alderaan exploding (despite the fact that he only had one eggbeater for an arm). He nodded at the pictures. "Observe the bands of brightness that prove my theorem!"

Liet squinted at the blurry printouts. "Are you hallucinating? There aren't any bands of brightness anywhere..."

"Liar!" DarkStar turned around and shouted to the woods. "Observe how he refuses to see obvious evidence!"

Sighing, Liet fired the Improbability Cannon again. One of the Black Knight's legs mysteriously disappeared, only to re-appear attached permanently to his ass. Boot-first (you couldn't even see the tip). "I SAID," Liet emphasized, "stand aside!"

"Never!" DarkStar insisted, hopping on his one foot to maintain balance. He charged toward Liet, bouncing off him. "Chicken! Chicken! You don't want to debate me!"

"Right, then I'll have your other leg!" Liet leveled out the Improbability Cannon again, and Guardian 2000's remaining leg was replaced with an egg (small typographical error, the typist was promptly shot). Anyway, the egg splatted all over as DarkStar landed on the ground.

"I'll get you for that!" Guardian 2000 nearly screamed. "And you still haven't provided evidence of your DET theorem! Principle of Parsimony says my theory is superior!"

Liet rolled his eyes. Would this nut never give up? He beckoned to the Gungan. "Come, Patsy." The two of them rode (Walked, sir) off into the distance.

Far behind them, they could just barely hear DarkStar screaming "You yellow bastards!" followed by a loud, very off-key singing of "La la la la"...


	8. Pirates of the Delta Quadrant

**C****hapter Eight: Worlds without End without End without E-**

(a click, then silence underlined with a static hum)

NARRATOR: (coughs) Sorry about that. Track started skipping on my iPod...

**Chapter Eight: Pirates of the Delta Quadrant**

A black dagger shape silently cruised through the void between the stars, its three ion engines flaring with intense blue light from the massive reactions within. The ship, just a bit over a mile long, bristled with hundreds if not thousands of gun turrets of all sizes.

The ship had started out life as an Imperator-class Star Destroyer, mark II, but over its long service life had undergone many not-so-trivial alterations. The reactor was overpowered, the gun output was higher, and some in the Imperial Navy would say it was crewed by a complete madman.

On the bridge of the behemoth, a certain Liet Kynes was somewhat inclined to agree. While he was certainly a madman in his own right (running around with an Improbability Cannon, which was somehow powered by a peculiarly British cup of tea, tended to do that to you), the captain of this ship took the cake—no, actually, Liet mused, that was a poor choice of wording seeing as the captain was currently enjoying a large carrot cake.

"So," the captain said between mouthfuls of cake, reaching up with one hand to adjust his tricorner hat, "what approach can we take to solve the issue at hand?"

"And what issue be that, exactly?" Liet asked, suddenly unsure why his accent had changed to that of a 16th century seafarer. He also appeared to have gotten shorter and sprouted a thick, stubbly beard.

"Why, the rum issue, of course," the captain replied. "There's been a dreadful shortage of rum in these parts. It is our mission," he said, slurring his words slightly, "to boldly go where no man has gone before... in search of rum! Savvy?" The captain staggered slightly, letting the frosted bottle of alcohol he had been somehow holding slip slightly before catching it again.

Liet just stared at the captain before slapping his palm into his forehead. He had a sneaking suspicion that another crossover had started.

(Meanwhile, a long time in the future, in a galaxy far, far away...)

A small, three hundred meter starship fled quite literally for its life, pursued, of all things, by a dozen giant cubes. Its hull was gouged and scarred from weapons fire, parts blackened and charred where the hull had failed and the internals of the ship had been exposed. It had been designed as an explorer, not a fighter, and this was painfully obvious as yet another green beam lanced out from one of the cubes and struck it in the docking bay, the doors violently exploding outward as the atmosphere within vented to space.

On the bridge of the small ship, as it rocked from yet another hit, the crew struggled to maintain their composure.

"Direct hit, Deck 12," Lieutenant Tuvok reported from the tactical station.

"Maintain evasive course," Janeway reaffirmed. "B'Elanna, what is your status?"

"Warp drive is still offline," the half-Klingon reported from Engineering. "They're not making this easy on us." There was the sound of a muffled explosion over the comm, and then static.

"We've lost internal comms," Tuvok reported. "The computer is attempting to re-route around the damaged areas."

Janeway turned around to face Seven of Nine, who was standing at the Astrometrics station. "Have you found anything that could help us yet?"

"Not yet-" Her voice trailed off. "There appears to be a wormhole forming directly in front of us."

A flicker of hope flashed across Janeway's face, for the first time in several days. "Ensign Kim, take us toward it, full speed. We may have a chance to escape."

Before Kim had a chance to respond to the order, however, Seven spoke again. "I'm reading something emerging, it's more massive than the Borg cubes although smaller."

"On screen," Janeway ordered.

The next sound could only be described as the crew collectively crapping their pants.

( ISD Black Pearl )

"That went well," Liet remarked as they emerged from the wormhole. "But what the hell are those?" he asked, pointing forward at the dozen giant cubes.

The captain shrugged. "Not my problem. Do they have any rum?"

"That be a 'no', Captain," someone reported at the Comm-Scan station. For some bizarre reason, now that Liet looked about, none of the crew were wearing standard Imperial uniforms. Instead, they were wearing a mixture of rags and Victorian era clothing.

"How about fair wenches?"

"Again, no," Comm-Scan replied. "But they do be having some sort of metal appendages stuck all over. If you're into that sort of thing, that is."

Liet had a brief feeling of deja-vu.

"They're hailing us, Captain," Comm-Scan reported again.

"What be they wanting?" the Captain retorted.

"Apparently they want to ... assimilate us. Resistance is futile or some such nonsense."

"Awk! Resistance is futile!" squawked Lt. Cotton's parrot.

"Will nobody shut up that parrot?" The captain asked, then thought about it for a moment. "Tell them that the only thing I'm interested in assimilating right now is more rum. If they don't have any, they are welcome to go bugger off."

"They're firing at us, Captain. Cosmetic damage only."

For the first time since Liet had been on board, the Captain seemed visibly angry. "Nobody scratches the paint on my Pearl! Ready the guns for a full broadside." He walked over to a giant wooden wheel that was inexplicably located in the middle of the bridge, and began turning it quickly. For some even stranger reason, the Star Destroyer began spinning about like a ship on a turbulent ocean.

Of course, what really had Liet puzzled was the sound that the guns made when they fired. As several thousand green bolts lanced out toward the dozen or so cubes, he could also smell a bit of sulfur.

Several seconds later, the battle, such as it was, was over with charred bits of Borg floating in deep space.

"Now that unpleasant business is over with, does that frigate have any rum or wenches?" the captain asked.

A viewscreen popped out of the ceiling and soon Janeway's face was displayed on it. "Thank you for saving us from the Borg," she began.

The captain waved his hand dismissively. "They didn't have any rum or wenches. Do you?"

Realization dawned on Janeway's face. "Wait a second... You're pirates!"

"You obviously possess astounding powers of reasoning. Now may I suggest you use that new-found intellect to locate us some rum? It would certainly be a shame if we were forced to commandeer your vessel."

"The Federation banned liquor," Janeway half stammered. "But we can give you synthetic rum, which tastes just like it."

The captain frowned. "What sort of screwed up society bans liquor? Rum is what makes the world turn..." He paced back and forth several times before finally realizing something, and pointed to Seven of Nine, who was visible at the back of the bridge. "Well, in that case, we'll just take her with us. This universe is boring anyway."

"I will not stand for your demands!" Janeway shouted. "She is one of my crew!"

The captain shrugged. "Well, don't say I didn't give you a choice." He cut the transmission off and turned to the pit. "Lock tractor beams and prepare to board."

The stormtroopers of the Black Pearl, surprisingly, actually did wear the classic white uniforms. Unsurprisingly, the uniforms were painted, scarred, and covered in bandanas and other fabrics. Instead of carrying the standard E-11 blasters, they all had long blaster muskets with wooden stocks and bayonets affixed to the front.

Thus, after Voyager had been pulled in so that its bridge dome rested inside the Black Pearl's hangar bay, a platoon of stormtroopers grabbed cables and swung down to the dome. They planted charges on top of the dome, and after the charges had gone off, they jumped down onto the bridge.

Several of Voyager's crew attempted to put up a fight, but the lack of cover on the bridge was their biggest enemy. A number of redshirts were shot, the blaster muskets giving off a plume of sulfurous smoke with every shot fired.

Janeway had backed into the turbolift with the rest of her crew, and they were hiding behind the walls, taking shots as they could. She picked off a couple of stormtroopers before one, unseen on the other side of the door, jumped out and lanced her through with his bayonet. He got shot with a phaser for his troubles, but unfortunately for Janeway a bayonet through the lung is hard to recover from, especially when the bayonet is rusty and jagged.

The last thing she remembered before blacking out was Seven being dragged away by the strange troopers.

( ISD Black Pearl )

"Orders, Captain?" the helm asked as the captain half-staggered, half-swayed toward them. He was holding an ancient looking compass in one hand, its dial spinning wildly. With his other hand, he was mimicking the compass's needle with his finger.

The compass finally stopped moving and he pointed off in the distance. "We go thataway."

"Aye aye, Captain."


	9. Liet Kynes and the Holy FAQ

**Chapter Nine: Liet Kynes and the Holy FAQ**

"I really have no idea what the author means by those silly titles sometimes," Liet sighed, displaying his knowledge of events that lay beyond the fourth wall as he continued on through hills and valleys in the English countryside. "I mean, seriously? Sparkling vampire cider? That just sounds disgusting."

The author tapped Liet on the shoulder. "Um, that's the title for chapter ten."

"Oh. My bad."

An impressively large castle loomed in the distance, so large that it could not have possibly been a mere model. As Liet approached, however, it seemed to shrink down until it stood a mere six feet high.

"Huh. Must be one of those portable model castles."

A tinny voice emanated from the castle. "I am C.S. Strowbridge, Dicktator of ASVS," it proclaimed. "Who dares to intrude upon my realm?"

"It is I, Liet Kynes, Champion of Logic," he replied. "I seek Knights of the Round Robin to join me in the quest for the Holy FAQ."

"That is a worthy cause," Strowbridge replied. "But first, I must verify that thou willst abide by the principles of ASVS. Who is TOWNMNBS?"

"The One Whose Name Must Not Be Spoken," Liet replied.

"Verily," Strowbridge said. "Now, what would win? An Eclipse-class Star Destroyer, or its mass in Galaxy-class ships?"

"Before the ICS or after?"

"Before."

Liet took a moment to consider the question. "Based on the 40-meter asteroids that were vaporized in The Empire Strikes Back, light turbolasers have approximately 22,000 terawatts of firepower. In the TNG episode 'The Nth Degree' it was shown that a terawatt-level emitter can overload the Enterprise's shields in less than a minute. Therefore, even facing its own mass in Galaxy-class ships, the fight should be over in less than an hour. The Federation ships simply do not have the combined firepower needed to bring down the shields of the Eclipse before they will be destroyed."

"Excellent," Strowbridge replied. "I will join your worthy cause, then." The three-inch high main gate opened, and a tiny figure stepped out. A moment later, there was a flash and Strowbridge stood at normal height.

"How do you do that, anyway?" Liet asked. "And why are you talking with that ridiculous fake English accent?"

Strowbridge pulled out a bottle labeled EAT ME. "I found a lifetime supply of these on auction at Christie's. Turns out it's much less expensive to build a six foot high castle than it is to build the real thing. Regarding your second question, I'm the Dicktator. If I want to speak with a ridiculous accent, that's my problem."

"I see," Liet replied, confused. "Shall we carry on?"

The two knights continued on their merry way, followed by Patsy the Gungan and Strowbridge's squire Elim clopping coconuts together.

(Later that day...)

(Inspiring instrumental score)

The two knights continued on their merry way, followed by-

"Didn't we just do that?"

"Do what?" Strowbridge asked.

"The two knights continued on their merry way..."

"Well, first off, I'm the Dicktator, not some mere knight," Strowbridge replied. "Here I am, ego the size of a planet, and you think I'm just some knight."

"Oh give it a rest, Strow," Liet replied. "I'm talking about the goddamned narrator. He's getting repetitive again. Must have skipped his Wheaties this morning."

(Later that day)

(Inspiring instrumental score)

The two knights continued on their merry-

"See?"

"What are you talking about?" Strowbridge asked irritably.

"I'm saying that either someone hit the narrator in the head or the author is being cheap and recycling stuff." As he spoke, the sky in the background unfurled and came crashing down, revealing a black sound-stage wall behind it.

"CUT!" the director exclaimed. Liet and Strowbridge turned around suddenly.

"Director?" Liet asked. "This is a _movie_?"

"A cheap knock-off of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, I'd say," Strowbridge replied. "It hasn't even been that funny so far, although the bit where you nailed Guardian 2000 was hilarious if predictable."

"When did you see that?" Liet was taken aback.

Strowbridge walked over to the craft services area, where several vending machines stood. One, next to the expresso machine, was labeled Mr. Movie. "Instant movies, out before they're made. What part of this do you want to see?"

Liet put his hands over his face and shook his head. "Mel Brooks already did that gag on _Spaceballs_. I'm not doing it again."

On the tiny screen in front of them, a tiny version of Liet shook his head. "Mel Brooks already did that gag on _Spaceballs_. I'm not doing it again."

Liet lunged for the controls to Mr. Movie and shut it off. "Strow, you _lunatic!_ You had it playing with a one-second delay! The echo reverberations would have been so powerful, it could have damaged the fabric of space-time!"

"Hey!" Doc Brown walked in waving a paper, his hair frizzled from a life spent around too many Tesla coils. "I get to do the space-time continuum lines around here!"

"What year is it?"

"Ah..." Doc looked down at his wrist, which was covered in watches. "Hmm. Great Scott, now's a long time ago! I'm late! But that's OK, I can make up for lost time..." He ran off and there was a sonic boom several moments later.

"Alright people, reset!" a nameless PA shouted. "Liet, Strow, wait here. Background, take 5."

"Would someone mind telling me who's in charge here?" Liet asked.

"I am, of course," Strowbridge replied.

"Wasn't talking to you," Liet muttered. "Asshat."

"I heard that."

"Knock it off, you two," the director said from behind. Liet and Strowbridge spun around to face him.

"James Cameron?" Liet asked. "I thought you were busy with that movie about Weyland-Yutani trying to kill the big Smurf hippies?"

"Nah, I'm done with that," the director replied. "Made a few billion, so I'm on to bigger and better things."

"Like this?"

His face scrunched up in concentration. "Huh. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense when you put it that way. I was _supposed_ to be doing the fourth Avatar sequel..." The erstwhile director vanished in a puff of logic.

"Well, that was anti-climactic," Liet said. "Let's get out of here."

They walked past the crumpled sky backdrop to one of the sound stage doors, opening it and nearly falling out into empty sky beyond.

"That was close," Strowbridge muttered.

Something best described as a galleon suspended from a balloon pulled up along the flying sound-stage. "Heave to and prepare to be boarded, ye landlubbers!" a voice shouted.

"You have _got_ to be kidding."

"I'll take that as an act of defiance," the same voice shouted back. Gunports on the galleon opened up, revealing antique-looking cannons. Liet and Strowbridge ducked back inside just as the guns opened fire, blowing man-sized chunks out of the soundstage wall. One of the chunks nailed the Gungan, who went flying through the opposite wall.

"We surrender!" a random PA shouted. Oddly enough, he was dressed in red pajamas, which probably explained the cannonball that sailed through the air and sent him flying through a wall scant seconds after he spoke.

Several minutes later, they found themselves standing on the deck of the galleon in front of the assembled pirates. The captain then stepped out of his quarters wearing an oddly frilly, lace dress. Liet couldn't help himself and began snickering.

"You think this is funny?" the captain, who looked oddly like Robert DeNiro, asked, brandishing a saber. "I'll have you know this is no laughing matter. We are the most dangerous pirates in the skies, and you will respect us!"

"I most certainly will," Liet said, suppressing a snort, "Captain Victoria Secret."

The man pressed his saber against Liet's neck. "It's Captain Shakespeare to you, insolent cur."

"Very well then, Captain Shakespeare. I am Liet Kynes, Champion of Logic. We are seeking knights to join us in our quest for the holy FAQ."

Shakespeare frowned. "Your dress is unbecoming of a knight."

"As yours is unbecoming of a captain?"

"Touche." Shakespeare sighed. "To be perfectly honest, this is not what I wear normally. It's for a play that I'm writing."

"We have many writers on ASVS," Liet replied. "Or at least, we did until everybody left Usenet. The FAQ is our only hope to bring users back from the Web boards and FF dot N."

"A worthy cause," Shakespeare replied. "Alas, I cannot join you as I have to finish training a young lad to be a swordsman, so he can return to his own home."

"That's a pity," Strowbridge replied sardonically. "Can you just let us off at the next port then?"

They spent several more days in the air looking for thunderstorms to harvest before Shakespeare announced that the capacitors were full.

"Looks like London," Liet observed as the _Caspertine_ swung around through a fogbank. "See, there's Big Ben." He paused in thought. "I'd imagine that we'll have the Royal Air Force after us right about now. They don't take kindly to people flying over Parliament without clearance."

"Oh, no need to worry about that," Shakespeare said, appearing suddenly from behind. "The _Caspertine_ is invisible to muggles."

"Muggles?" Strowbridge parroted.

"You know? Non-magical folk?"

Strowbridge shook his head and turned to Liet. "What's he going on about magic, anyway? I thought that it was just sufficiently advanced technology that was indistinguishable from magic."

Realization dawned on Liet, and he looked down at the Improbability Gun dangling from his belt like a second wang. Evidently its improbable effects were active even when he wasn't using it, which certainly explained Cameron, the flying sound stage, and this.

"I suppose that means the author is attempting to pander to the seething masses of Harry Potter fans," Liet grumbled. "Great. Now I have to put up with bratty, teenaged wizards with bad attitudes and even less intelligence."

"Harry is actually quite intelligent," Shakespeare remarked. "Certainly not bratty. I should know, I've been training him and Hermione for the past several weeks."

Liet rolled his eyes and resigned himself to his fate with a sigh as a teen with dark, curly hair and comically large glasses stepped forward, a slightly built red-haired teenage girl next to him. "I should have known."

"Known what?" the boy asked.

"Nevermind," Liet replied. "Um... how are you at making explosions?"

Harry produced a small dark wand and waved it slightly. "_Incendio_."

On the other side of the deck, a barrel detonated harmlessly.

Liet shrugged. "Well, not as indiscriminate as Tim the Enchanter, but I guess I'm stuck with you. I'm Liet Kynes, Champion of Logic, and this is C.S. Strowbridge, Dicktator of ASVS. We're on a quest to find the Holy FAQ."

"Nice to meet you," Harry replied. "Harry Potter. I'm a student at Hogwarts, Gryffindor house. This is... well, _was..._ my third year there."

"You mean you're actually studying there?" Liet asked in disbelief.

"Um... well..." Hermione poked Harry in the ribs, and he spluttered. "Yeah. Most of the time anyway. When we're not fighting to save the school and ourselves from attack anyway."

"Right," Liet replied sardonically. "I suppose Dumbledore is behind all of the attacks as well."

Harry frowned. "What gave you that idea?"

"Are you sure he's not using you? You know, being an evil manipulative mastermind?

Hermione slapped Liet across his cheek. "You insensitive clod! Dumbledore _died_ to protect Harry and Hogwarts!"

"No he didn't! He's very much alive!" Harry objected.

Hermione paused before taking off her book bag and pulling out a copy of _Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince_. "See? Snape kills him right here!" she said, gesturing to a page.

Harry looked at the page, then at the cover of the book, and palmed his face. "That won't happen for another three years!" He paused in confusion. "Where did you get that, anyway?"

"Amazon," Hermione replied without missing a beat.

"In Brazil?" Harry asked, dumbfounded. "How?"

She reached out and affectionately ran her hand across Harry's chin. "You know, for someone who lived with Muggles for so long, you're really naive. I mean the website."

"Oh." Harry looked thoughtful. "So how is it you have the book when it hasn't happened yet?"

"Silly," Hermione replied, "the book's been out for four years now. Then again, you never did like to read, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised."

"Um," Harry paused, obviously trying to grasp the situation, "so that means that everything we're doing, and saying, is also in one of those books? Kind of like predestination?"

"Well, no," Hermione replied. "We're in another person's story. A parallel universe, if you will."

"So Dumbledore might be an evil scheming mastermind after all?" Liet said hopefully. He hadn't been able to _shoot_ anything in a while, and the Improbability Cannon was getting restless. An old, evil wizard made such a nice target.

"It's possible... in somebody _else_'s story," Hermione finally replied. "Anything could be possible, actually. Who knows, Wonder Boy over here probably even has a harem in one of those universes." She turned to look at Harry, whose mouth hung slightly open with a blank expression, and promptly slapped him.

"Hey! Don't go getting any ideas."

"I wasn't!" Harry protested. "I was just... contemplating infinite parallel universes."

"Yeah. Sure you were." She winked at Harry. "Who were you fantasizing about there?"

"Uh... why?"

"I'm curious."

"Um..." Harry scratched his neck awkwardly. "Well... Ginny."

"That _slut_?" Hermione asked.

"You're the one who told her to start dating other people!" Harry shouted in reply. "Besides, better a slut than a bookworm!"

"That's _it!_" She tackled Harry, pinning him to the ground, and began slapping him repeatedly. Liet could have sworn he saw a smile cross Harry's face as the whole thing happened.

Behind him, Strowbridge coughed. "I think we should leave before this fic gets an NC-17 rating."

"Good idea," Liet replied, adjusting his Improbability Cannon's shoulder strap. "Where to now?"

Strowbridge shrugged. "Booze and hookers sounds good to me."

"You just said you didn't want this fic to get an NC-17!" Liet objected.

"Who said it had to be in the story?"

Realization dawned on Liet's face. "I see where you're going." He reached into his pocket and pulled out the strange compass, which gyrated wildly before settling on a direction. Opening a port on the Improbability Cannon, he locked the compass into it, aimed, and fired.

The world flashed into purple polka dots.


	10. Martinelli's Sparkling Vampire Cider

**Chapter Nine: Martinelli's Sparkling Vampire Cider**

UNNAMED P.A. (O.S.)

Sir, we already did chapter nine.

AUTHOR (O.S.)

(mutters random colorful curses)

**Chapter Ten: See Above**

I stopped at the entrance of the strip club on the outskirts of early 21st century Seattle, puzzled at the sudden change in the story's point of view. Shrugging, I trudged onward into the den of sin, gripping my trusted Improbability Cannon by my side.

"Is that a fashion statement or are you just happy to see me?" one of the girls asked as I walked in the door. Too snarky, I decided. Her attire and makeup made her look like one of the Jersey Shore girls, which was a red flag to just STAY AWAY.

"Neither," I snarled.

"Sheez," she remarked with a huff as she turned away. "Somebody sure pissed in his cornflakes..."

There was a cough beside me and I turned to face Strowbridge. "I think you need to adjust that compass. If Seattle had an armpit, this would be it."

"It was either that or watch underage teens make out on the deck of a flying pirate ship," I retorted.

"Still, when I said booze and hookers, this _wasn't_ what I had in mind."

"I'm sure the author has a reason for it," I replied. "Otherwise there would be no reason to give this chapter such a ridiculous title. Or put it into the god-damned first person perspective. My psychic jaw is already aching from the introspective dialog."

"You have one?" Strowbridge asked.

"I do now," I replied.

"This is bull-BEEPing-shit," Strowbridge remarked some time later as we walked around the bar. "Not one single pair of titties to be found in this whole place. What good is a strip club where they don't take the damn outfits off?" He paused. "What the BEEP? Who the BEEP is BEEPing censoring me?"

"Keeps the fic rating at a teen level," I muttered.

"The author is a fruity man whore," Strowbridge proclaimed.

I silently waited for a thunderbolt to strike him down from on high, but none were forthcoming. Apparently the author was attempting to stay away from Deus Ex Machinas. Good for him.

"So anyway," I ventured, "what do you suppose the author has in store for us this time?"

"I dunno," Strowbridge replied in a sullen tone, "but this place sucks donkey balls."

"Getting to use the more creative swear words and insults now?" I asked.

"Yeah, since the BEEPing author is too BEEPing chickenBEEP to use manly words like BEEP."

It had been easy to forget just how much Strowbridge liked the word BEEP. He practically used it as punctuation. Interspersed it along with any number of descriptive adjectives for any number of occasions. "Frak and kriff just don't have the same ring," I agreed.

We stepped out of the club and into the gloomy drizzle of a Seattle evening. What a depressing city. Three months of sunny weather out of the whole year? Who the hell in their right minds would choose to live in such a place?

The unasked question was answered for me as we continued down a dark alley. There was a blur in front of us and suddenly we found ourselves face to face with a person I would normally have described as a lean, pasty-faced teenager. In another life, I might have assumed he was a sci-fi fan who had escaped from his parent's basement, but given the chapter title, first person tense, and setting I quickly realized that we were starting a god-damned Twilight crossover.

Dear Finagle, why?

"I have no quarrel with you," I said in as close to a Jedi's tone as I could muster, while waving my hand in front of the pseudo-vampire's face. "We are wanderers from another universe merely passing through."

"Huh?" The vampire's face was twisted up in obvious confusion.

I unslung the phallic cannon from my shoulder. The vampire's frown deepened.

"We're like sliders," I explained. "Ever watch that show?"

"Dude, so like I don't even, like, know what you're, like, talking about," the vampire said.

Great. A vampire that talks like a Valley Girl. Could this day get any better? part of my brain began to wonder. Wait-stop that thought-

There was a loud bang and a clatter of feet from behind us in the alleyway. A tall, handsome man with pale skin and short-cropped hair, in his arms carrying a pregnant, dark-haired woman with lightly blushed cheeks, was running at full tilt around the corner. A swarm of dogs-no, wolves with foam dripping from their teeth, was chasing after them followed in turn by an army of vampires.

What? Did I just describe him as handsome? Oh, for the love of Jove. Even the prose was going purple. I wanted to puke, but barely managed to restrain myself.

"You don't look very good," Strowbridge observed from beside me.

"This has all the makings of a horrible _Twilight_ fanfic," I choked out. "We have to do something to stop it. And the author - he's gone mad. Mad I tell you!"

Edward and Bella chose that moment to crash into myself and Strowbridge. The world slowed before my eyes, and thinking quickly, as we went down in a heap, I clutched the Improbability Cannon tightly to my chest in the hope that it would not be damaged. The last thing I wanted was to be stuck in this universe.

Behind us, the wolves stopped, turned, and formed into a wall. On the other side of the werewall, the vampires came to a screeching halt (literally). I could almost smell rubber sneakers burning, they stopped so fast.

"Edward," Bella coughed out the name, with a trickle of blood escaping her lips, "it's happening now. Promise me you'll protect our child?"

I palmed my face as I climbed to my feet. Strowbridge, who had just finished doing the same, gave me a sympathetic sigh.

"I promise," he said in a congested voice, then stood and looked around. "Is anyone here a doctor?"

"Look, you idiot," I brushed the dust off my tweed jacket, "you're in the middle of a dark alley in Seattle. We're surrounded by werewolves and vampires. Any doctor with two brain cells would have run long ago. Any doctor who was dumb enough to stick around I'm sure wouldn't want to see whatever sort of unholy abomination is inside her."

The comment earned me a fist to the face. Whatever people said about the _Twilight_ vampires, there was one thing for sure: they were surprisingly strong. One moment I was standing there, facing a pissed-off Edward, the next moment I was blinking to clear stars from my vision clear on the other side of the alley as I lay slumped against a wall. Ow. That hurt.

I managed to stand up, running a hand over my formerly perfect nose, just in time to see Bella's stomach distorting. As I walked back over to where Strowbridge was (he had wisely backed far away from the emo couple), he laughed quietly.

"Guess you just found another thing to add to your list of What Not to Do."

"Whatever," I replied sourly.

We both turned to watch the unfolding delivery. Edward was kneeling down in between Bella's legs, apparently waiting for the baby to magically emerge. Her stomach became more distressed, with shapes beginning to move underneath the surface.

"Where have I seen that before?" Strowbridge asked from beside me.

Suddenly her skin tore, and a black shape shot out of her belly, latching on to Edward's face.

"_Alien,_" I replied as I armed the Improbability Cannon. "Time to go."

"Wait," Strowbridge placed his hand over the trigger guard. As he did, I saw Edward pull the xenomorph off his face. What? Was he _smiling_?

"Aww... a hug already! That's daddy's little girl!" The black thing thrashed about in his hands, its tongue-mouth lashing and snapping at his face. "So strong, too! Bella, what should we name her?"

Unable to stand it anymore, I pulled the trigger. As the world dissolved around me, my stomach relieved itself of the can of Chef Boydaree I'd had for lunch earlier. There was only so much emo I could handle.


End file.
